"Comparing Samsung's flagship products before and after release of the iPhone & iPad, and how Apple's intellectual property infringement claims hold up." A terrible visual guide that ignores not only Samsung's own pre-iPhone designs, but also - and worse yet - the thirty-odd years of mobile computing that preceded the iPhone. Typical of today's technology world: a complete and utter lack of historical sense. Worse yet are the claims about icons: only the phone icon is similar, but Apple did not invent the green phone icon. This is a remnant of virtually all earlier phones which use a green phone icon for initiate/answer call, and a red phone icon for terminate/reject call. Claiming this deserves IP protection is beyond ridiculous, and shows just how low Apple is willing to go.

Hoping to draw a little heat away from Thom here. I *AM* biased in this case. I'm absolutely INCENSED that Apple is claiming Samsung ripped them off, going so far as to call it "offensive."

No, what's offensive is Apple claiming ANY INNOVATION AT ALL in the iPhone. The iPod Touch and (aside from the phone portion) the iPhone did not do ONE THING that my Palm Tungsten E couldn't do in 2002. And around the same time, the Handspring Treo came out, giving us a phone / browser / PDA. Handspring started in 1998, and already had the idea for the phone / PDA mash-up. Guess what? It had icons! Imagine that! Of course, the icon idea was stolen from Xerox anyway.

I suppose people will start yelling about capacitive multi-touch screens and gestures. Apple didn't invent those. Arguably, the Jot handwriting recognition was a type of gestures. Mouse gestures long predate the iPhone. "Pinch to zoom" is cool and all, but it's not some brilliant idea Apple came up with out of the blue.

And why are we talking about the software, anyway? Samsung used Android, which isn't even theirs! How can they possibly be accused of copying Apple with software they didn't write?

As for "design," again the original Palm pilot and a host of PDAs all could be confused from a distance. Is the iPhone pretty? Sure. Can you claim someone copied Apple because they made a rectangular block? (Incidentally, the founder of Handspring literally walked around with different sized blocks of wood to determine the best size. The Handspring Visor is remarkably similar in form factor to the iPhone, if much more plastic-y.

Apple in this case isn't just a patent troll. They are delusional. No one else can make a rectangle! We invented that!